How to do a fuzzy comparison of texts?

[badikidiki]

Hello,

what we want to do is to find multiple persones in our dataset.

We do have names and addresses of these persons.

The problem is that there are different ways in spelling names of persons or streets - e.g. with "-" or without / "n" or "nn".

Is there any possibility in SAS to do a "fuzzy" comparison of alphanumeric variables?

Something like "most" (90%, 95%) of two strings is identical ?

Thanks!

badikidiki 

[user24feb · Accepted solution]

You could look here: http://blogs.sas.com/content/sgf/2015/01/27/how-to-perform-a-fuzzy-match-using-sas-functions/

Or if simple is o.k., you could use for example the compress function to remove dashes, etc. and compare afterwards.

[badikidiki]

Thank you very much for your helpful answer!